


What Good is a King?

by tklivory



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Depression, Despair, Drabble, F/M, Ferelden, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Thedas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tklivory/pseuds/tklivory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to King Alistair after the Archdemon falls and before the Inquisitor triumphs? A drabble pondering the cruelty inflicted on Alistair Therin by a particular canon</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Good is a King?

 

Alistair Theirin knew he was in love with, and loved by, his fellow Warden. It was a love hard fought, hard won, and as indelible as the taint in his blood, or so he’d thought. Constant fighting companions, good enough friends that a single word spoken with a specific inflection could cause hidden laughter, and enough lust between them to make their companions roll their eyes every time they disappeared after a major skirmish.

Then they’d gone to the Landsmeet. Tabris spared Loghain and made Alistair marry Anora, over his objections, and spoke to him only one more time, weeks later, when she returned to Denerim to fight the darkspawn without him. _I love you,_  she said. _I love you too much to let you watch me die._

And then she was gone.

That night, he later heard, she’d climbed Fort Drakon, alone and ahead of the rest of her party, and took on the Archdemon herself. Both were found upon the ramparts by Warden Loghain - _oh how that burned inside -_  and given a fit farewell by King Alistair.

But it wasn’t the end, was it? Bereft of any true choices in his life, Alistair tried. Tried despite the anger, the bitterness, and, eventually, the guilt - because anger can only take one so far before the breadth of one’s own culpability sinks in like a blow deeper than any sword could strike. Tried despite the hollowness inside that grew with every suspicious glance from those allied with his wife - _his WIFE, Maker!_  - and with every disdainful glance from his own chancellor, the man who’d set him on his throne. Tried despite his failure to perform even that most basic of _kingly_ functions, as the one quickening of Anora’s womb in ten years faded after one night of blood and tears. Tried despite the way the road called to him, reminding him of a happier time in his life - and how truly pathetic was that, when the Blight represented a _better time_ for him?

Sometimes he succeeded. The people cheered his name, the Denerim Alienage prospered - his final promise to Tabris fulfilled despite Anora’s objections - and his father was found and put to rest. Perhaps it wasn’t enough to compensate for his failures and shortcomings, but at least it was _something_.

And then the sky exploded, and the world started to fall apart again. There was nothing he could do except watch as another hero struggled with a weight he’d seen before, on a different set of slim shoulders. There was nothing he could do as the memories returned, as the rifts opened throughout his kingdom to sow uncertainty on the backdrop of mages and templars gone mad, and as the Inquisitor slowly took the place of the Hero in the hearts and minds of the people of Thedas.

And what was Alistair amidst all that, truly? Nothing more than a relic, a memory, a failure, and best forgotten. The last of his line, and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. 

At least the Deep Roads’ call would be easy to answer.


End file.
